Children Scare Me
by Spectaculoid
Summary: Montag is still going through the motions of realizing there's more to life if he just thinks about it, considering deeper questions, like where in the world his food comes from. He visits a high school to give a presentation on what it is to be a fireman and to scare teenagers out of picking up reading. (After he learns Clarisse is dead and before Beatty's lecture).
1. Chapter 1

Montag had read that there were people in the world, in other countries, who were starving, kept poor as vagrant's dog, somehow because of the way people lived over here.

This was the thought nosing through his rain, sniffing around and nudging about his everyday experiences, tugging at strands of memories and pushing them aside, looking for an example crushed flat and undetectable under the still bulky, numb perception of his life.

Montag felt his eyes begin to droop with the tediousness of standing around, waiting, with no one with anything to say to talk to, so he wagged his head back and forth, stood quite suddenly erect, and his eyes popped open. _Awake, _he scolded himself. _Be alert. Look there. Look! _And so he picked something, anything to focus on, just to stay focused. Montag slipped back into a molasses-like trance again, lost in thought, absentmindedly drilling a hole deep inside the thick skull of the person standing in front of him in line. Montag clenched his toes, digging his heel into the tile floor for some connection to the earth.

_Earth._ _How ancient and ignored, mythical in how we don't care much to understand it_.His eyes ran across the rows of check-out counters and slid to the floor, swiping the supermarket for the answer. His bouncing eyes finally landed in a pyramid of oranges, perfectly round and waxy in the light just hanging overhead. The more he gazed, the more peculiar the shapes became. Like when you say the word, "wall," or something, repeatedly, a hundred times, and it gets sticky in your mouth as you say it again, this time with more enunciation. But after a while, it still sounds like the most bizarre word that ever rolled of your tongue.

"Hey. You're next."

Montag's trance shattered. He swung his head to the customer behind him. "I'm sorry?"

The woman just looked at him, with half-lidded eyes. She glared at the ceiling and removed a Seashell from her ear, as if for the third time in two minutes.

"You're next. They're ready for y- _what?!"_ she hissed abruptly. Montag's gaze dropped to the floor, and he flinched. Clutching her leg was an imp, with gnashing, slobbering little fangs, little snotty, red nose crinkling, yanking on her pant leg. In one grubby hand was a mobile cellular device. The small screen was dominated by bright neon colors, flashing, spinning, noisy little characters, but a moment later, the phone smacked onto to the floor, thrown by the raging child.

He was utterly fascinated, in a morbid sort of way. "What goblins children are," he murmured, watching the child stamp and moan and yell and sniffle, a little cry gurgling in such a small, sweaty throat, rising louder and louder until the child was howling, like the cats outside the window at night, but loud as a siren. Somewhere behind him, he could hear more yelling, angry and whining, an adult tantrum, but what a presence, that tyke, like a police car itself had parked in the middle of the supermarket, lights pulsing and sirens wailing, stealing the show, like that one time in one of Mildred's shows she was always glued to. He couldn't look away, no matter how repulsive, just like he couldn't in class once, years ago, watching a dead rat's belly get sliced open to reveal slimy, purple bulbs lining it's stomach in a science video. Absolutely disgusting and hypnotic, all at the same time. He was very glad he and Mildred decided not to have kids.

The mother groaned, exasperated, and hauled the child away, leaving the phone stranded in the aisle. The tiny, neon figures were still dancing across the screen, jumping around and twirling, making little pinging sounds. A lively tune buzzed from the phone, distorting once in a while when a fuzzy wave of black and white washed over the vibrant screen.

"What are you doing? C'mon, I don't have all day" the cashier huffed and motioned him forward, "What're you looking at? C'mon."

Montag, startled, moved swiftly along, setting his frozen foods and box of coffee packets on the conveyor belt. As he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and leafed through bills, he glanced back at the pyramid of oranges, all so impeccably arranged and full of color. Not a bruise or a scuffed up patch on the orange skin. The cashier leaned over the counter and snapped, very close to his face, plucked his receipt from the machine, and waved it in front of him until Montag got his wits about him again and took it.

But he didn't leave immediately. Montag made for the door, but that question was tickling his brain again. It was making him uncomfortable, like a yawn that he just couldn't completely execute. What is it that we have here that others don't? Montag had a hard time imagining where these other people were or what their lives were like. He stared at the fruit department again, and let the thought climb around the shelves of his mind, rifling through his memories, lifting up blocks of familiar things, habits, routines. He let his head fall to the side, studying the orange pyramid, trying to see what it looked like upside down. He caught himself quickly, and looked around to see if anyone else noticed the fireman looking pensive, about fruit of all things. Everyone was looking somewhere else, off in the distance, miles beyond the cream-colored walls and automatic doors, looking down at their phones, tablets, fiddling with Seashells, brushing their clothes. He felt a breeze on the back of his neck, and he tossed a glance over his shoulder again, a thought squeezing past the rest of his dull experiences to the front of his mind.

All of the sudden, he felt like an alien, exposed and bewildered, like he was plunked down here at random from outer space. Montag drank his surroundings in, scanned the ceiling, the dimly lit fruit department, the toilet paper and holiday card aisle, and saw an excess of _things, _different things, categories of things with tabs labeling where to find cardboard pizzas and canned foods and dental products and bags of coal. How odd is that, a pyramid of fruit? Basket after basket of food, packaged, peeled, shiny with tiny drops of water, cold, smooth, colorful, and big, but they came from somewhere. Somewhere dirty and unsterile. Somewhere by a creek, near the woods, where there are strutting chickens and smelly cows, maybe. Dirt and dust and rust. Poop. Animals. But bananas? Do they come from somewhere else? Montag shut his eyes and tried to remember.

It didn't come. He stood there, waiting for another minute, and shortly left the store.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning, Montag lay in bed, trying to memorize the locations of little gargoyle faces and shapes hidden in the popcorn ceiling. He didn't want to go to school.

It was thirty past eleven when he finally sat up, letting his legs dangle for a moment over the side of the bed before grabbing his uniform and moving towards the sink. He heard Mildred shuffling downstairs, getting her morning coffee and getting ready to sit down in the parlor with "the family." Hearing her chuckle from downstairs, "Oh, Jerry, you're a kick," Montag glared at the mirror and threw his toothbrush on the counter. It clattered on the surface for a second and sprung over the edge, hitting the grey carpet with a tiny thud. Montag sighed and bent over, and dropped it back onto the counter.

"Bye. I'm leaving," Montag called as he pulled his boots on in front of the door. A silence followed, save for the clinking of porcelain mugs and background chatter from the parlor walls. He turned around to find Mildred curled up in a blanket, eyes glazed over as she held her coffee mug, on the couch. He strode into the parlor and positioned himself in front of the screen. She moved her head back, and her eyebrows furrowed slightly, confused, and she raised her head to look at him. Blank stare. Lovely.

"Now that I've got your attention," Montag clapped his hands together, "I'm off to the school, down by the barber's." He waited, eyebrows raising higher with the passing seconds, and after another moment of perturbed silence, Mildred said, "Wait. You're leaving?" Montag nodded slowly. "Where're you going?" Montag figured he'd better make himself comfortable. He sat down with her on the couch and took her hands. Her eyes wandered back the screen, but he snatched the remote and turned it off.

"Yes. I'm leaving. Remember that thing Beatty asked me to do last week? Talk to some snot-nose teenagers about not getting into trouble with the law and all that, career-day kinda? I'm going to tell them…" he stared past her head at the ventilator grille, "what it is to be a fireman. You remember. Right?"

Mildred thought for a moment. His shoulders slumped. "Right. Bring back some donuts or something, while you're out," and she went back to spending some quality time with "the family." Montag opened the door to a blast of cold air. "Love you, too," he muttered.

Jesselyn High School was a spooky place. _So this is what they look like, grown up,_ he thought, as he stepped out of the way of two beefy teenagers barreling down the hallway, clutching at each other's jersey and dragging each other around corners. Montag pulled the collar of his long coat closer to his neck and continued onward, up the spiraling stairs. Around and around and around they went, twisting up to what must have been a tower at this rate, and with every step, Montag felt as though his innards were bubbling. There was a dragon somewhere in these halls, a shadow cast over the school that gave Montag prickly skin. At last, he made it to the top of the stairs, unfortunately just as the bell began to screech, signaling the end of lunch. With a whoosh, the doors burst open and hordes of zombies came flooding in. They washed over the floor, from wall to wall, closing in on Montag. He pressed against the cold, metal lockers with peeling red paint and watched them pass, trampling over his feet and not noticing him at all. The wave swelled in the next couple of minutes, and Montag released his hold of a locker padlock and let himself be carried down the hall.

They were so loud, shouting to talk to each other but never taking out their Seashells, bumping into each other and sometimes knocking someone down. Montag halted and pushed to change direction so he could help the student up, but he couldn't fight the current and was subsequently swept away, to be deposited further down the hall and two doors down from where he was supposed to be.

As the class was settling down, Montag introduced himself to the English teacher, Mr. Shelsha, a thin man some years older than Montag. He had a well-trimmed white bush of a goatee and a curling mustache, suited in a bedraggled looking argyle sweater and slacks. He was unusually at ease for a teacher, taking his time getting his notes together and chatting up Montag, asking him if he'd been working just the night before – a sore subject, considering just the other day a woman just lit her own house on fire and burned right alongside her books, but Montag didn't let the man know that.

"Ooh, scary, isn't it?" The old man looked positively gleeful as set his mug down, angling himself towards Montag, saying, "Now, I had this one student –" he shivered, "Gave me the willies, boy, I'll tell ya what. Always asking questions, hanging around after class, you know, poking through the books, and I didn't want her to look it up herself, right, because I don't doubt she'd be the one to go straight down that path and never come back till they beat it out of you in prison…"

Montag looked back at the students. "I don't know," he said, "Seems like you do a good job beating it out of 'em here first." There was a boy Montag had taken notice of, hunched over a newspaper and reading it intently. He hadn't seen a physical newspaper in a long time. Without warning, the student in front of him turned around in his seat, tore the paper from his hands, and ripped it in half. He let it flutter to the ground, and the boy behind him looked stunned as the bully heaved his portable stereo up and unloaded it onto the boy's desk. With a click and the twist of the dial, music drowned the room and his conversation with Mr. Shelsha. It was all very invasive to Montag.

The girl behind the poor kid was beginning to wiggle the back of his seat, gaining momentum in an attempt to tip his chair over with him in it. Montag became increasingly concerned as he watched this happen, but the teacher replied, "Well, we do like to prepare our students for their futures as best we can, live their lives to the fullest, you know, cultivate potential. That's why it's so great that you could come out to talk to us. Give 'em the good old intimidation technique, eh?" The boy with the newspaper was growing agitated. None of the other students seemed to notice.

"I mean, life is so short. We can't have them taking these – these detours where

they –"

A crash resounded from behind them. Montag heard the preceding shriek of the chair and shuddered, whipping around. The kid had fallen backwards in his chair, and his classmates were busting up with laughter. The one in the front got a real kick out of it, banging his fist on his desk and cracking up silently, tears streaming down his face. Montag looked at these faces, scrunched up with hooting and hawing, giggling and guffawing. He could see the talons on their hands, their faces contorting into the profile of some kind of wicked beast. Their faces, pockmarked with the love pecks of puberty, and lodged right next to them, in their skin, were scales. Ugly, inhuman scales that ran all up and down their arms, glittering now that Montag could see them in the light. The gnarling horns on these scary children, silver eyes glinting like steel under a cold moon, laughing like hyenas at this pup being torn to shreds by the two animals up in front. Montag cringed and turned back around to see the man still talking.

"I-I'm sorry, are you going to stop this?" Montag interrupted, pointing at the commotion behind him. The teacher looked up from his desk. "Hmm? Oh, that's Gomez. He's always pulling this kind of stuff. Hold on," and the man walked over to the boys. Montag relaxed a little, still keeping a trained eye on the two knuckleheads sitting by the kid. Montag may not be on the right side of history at this particular point time, but it was satisfying to see justice served. But then something interesting happened.

"Gomez!" Montag sat forward. The boy sighed and propped his elbow up on the floor, littered with trash and spitballs, resting his cheek in his hand. He looked exhausted, his legs tangled in the fallen chair and someone else's backpack straps so he couldn't get up on his own without making a fool of himself. The bully in front, who had been rocking back and forth in his seat up till then, sneered at the kid and eased back into his chair, facing the front.

"Ray Gomez, what did I tell you about bringing newspapers in this classroom? This is a –"

"But they've just released a statement, they've advanced onto the East Co –"

"This is English, not history! And we're going to be just _fine, _so stop reading garbage like that. Better yet, stop reading period! That is a _really _dangerous habit to pick up. In fact, this man over here, who's been patiently waiting in a corner, come on out, Montag, this is Guy Montag. He's a fireman, everybody. Good morning, Mr. Montag. I'll let you take it from here."

Montag felt like a guest at dinner when the family's fighting. The class quieted down relatively quickly, their scales sinking back into their skin as they looked at him in with a mixture of awe and fear. He stared back awkwardly for what seemed like minutes. Ever since he'd started reading in covert, he'd been staring a lot, and he was afraid someone would begin to notice. Beatty certainly had. That's why he was here in the first place. "Learn by teaching others," was his choice of words.

"Hi, my name is Montag, and I am a fireman. Yes! Yes, I take calls from around Jesselyn, go out with the truck and the crew at least three times a week. Yep…it's a pretty, pretty swell job." He could tell he was losing them fast, so he pulled his own nightmare out of his sleeve to see if they found it any interesting, cold-blooded monsters they were. He smiled wryly. "Does anyone know anything about the Mechanical Hound? Anyone heard of it?" You could hear a pin drop in the room, it was so silent. Almost. There was at least one student who thought she was being stealthy, wearing a hoodie with the drawstrings inconspicuously _tucked in her ears._ Montag shook his head at her softly, still waiting for a response. But the room stayed quiet. He stood at the front of the room and felt like he was back home, seeing if Mildred heard him or was going to answer. They stared back with empty eyes, fidgeting. Gomez appeared to be captivated by the ceiling.

"Nobody? Okay then." Montag turned to look back at Mr. Shelsha, but he was concentrating on last week's episode of _The White Clowns _on his computer screen_, _Seashells firmly plugging his ears. Montag took a deep breath and prepared to explain the monstrosity that was the Hound when the boy in front of Gomez unexpectedly raised his hand, hesitant at first.

"Yes? Mister…?"

"Daniel. Well, it's this robot, right? And it's really big and has these crazy metal teeth, right? Like barbs." He leaned back in his chair, a smug expression settling in his freckled face. "And, anyway, whenever somebody breaks the law or, in the worst case scenario, somebody is secretly hording books…" he snuck a glance at Gomez, who caught it and sat up, nervously, "then the Hound will hunt them down, tracking them with its sense of smell." He continued, excitedly, "And the Hound'll corner the nutjob, and this long, wickedly sharp needle will extend from its nose, and it'll _stab_ the weirdo, right in the stomach, maybe." In a slightly bored voice, he added, "Then, the old bookworm will be injected with morphine and die. But after that comes the incinerator!" His face lit up, and Montag was terrified.

Daniel saw Montag's face and mistook it for impressed. "Yeah, I know a lot about it. Kind of embarrassing," he looked around at his classmates, "But it makes sense, because I've always wanted to be a fireman."

Montag studied the boy, quite alarmed. "…Really?" he asked, finally. Montag recovered and went on to describe various instances of book-burnings over the years, his harrowing encounter with the Hound, and, as vaguely as he could put it, the danger of books. As he spoke, his heart was getting ahead of his words, thumping faster and faster as his speech became shakier and riddled with pauses to catch his breath. The class was hardly enraptured by the end of his long and winding lecture. Occasionally, Gomez would peer at him out of the corner of his eyes. Most of the time, he was looking down at his desk.

"So, if you ever hear or see anyone around you with a book or acting suspicious in any way," Montag's hands were sweating, he couldn't believe the words tumbling from his dry lips, "be sure to give us a call. It's our job to protect you, and at this age, everyone's going through a tough part of their lives when they might…turn to self-destructive habits. You are a bystander with unique power," he gulped, "who sees this behavior at ground-level." Students glanced at the clock overhead and began to shuffle. Montag continued and looked straight ahead at Gomez. "You don't want to get caught with books. Understand?" The boy stared back for a moment and resumed getting his stuff together.

The classroom cleared out. Mr. Shelsha got up from his desk, and said, "I have to go to the teacher's lounge. My lunch's in there. Beef stroganoff." With a spring in his step, the man left Montag and Gomez in the deserted room. Gomez was finishing up packing, after several students had shoved past him and made it difficult for him to move. He hesitated before leaving, looking at the torn newspaper and back at Montag. He began to walk away, but Montag called him back.

"Hey, wait. This is yours." Gomez gave him a questioning look. Very slowly, he picked up the pieces and went over to the recycling bin. To his back, Montag asked, "Did you …have you ever…you ever meet a girl named Clarisse? Clarisse McLellan? About seventeen, asks a lot of questions, little strange? Likes nature?" Gomez stopped by the door and had a guarded look in his brown eyes. He frowned, and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I know her. Why?" He didn't seem to want to give a lot of detail.

"It's just that…have you seen her recently? Has she been sick or something?" The kid put his hand on the doorknob. His eyes narrowed. "Look, I don't know what you're trying to get at, but I don't know her that well. I don't have anything to do with-with whatever it is you're talking about." Montag held his hands up, shaking his head. "Alright, alright, just checking." The boy exited the classroom, and the newspaper caught Montag's attention again. The coast was clear, so he drew it out of the bin and pushed it down to the bottom of his pocket, crumpled and torn as it was.

Back at home, behind the bed, he pulled it out again. "Army Prepares for Defense. Encroachers On New Jersey Soil," it read in bold letters. Curiosity struck him, and he searched for the name of the newspaper company. Only the initials, _J.D. _could be found. Montag jumped slightly, hearing Mildred stomping up the stairs. He tucked the newspaper under some heavy boxes and clambered onto the mattress, groping for the TV remote before she came in.


End file.
